Canadian couple won’t reveal child’s gender

Ever since the 1970s when Marlo Thomas and Friends introduced the idea of raising gender neutral kids in the Free to Be…You and Me record, parents have encouraged their boys to play with dolls and their girls to build with blocks.

A Toronto couple is taking this concept to a more controversial extreme by keeping the gender of their 4-month-old baby a secret. They have no plans to reveal whether their child named Storm is a boy or a girl. They say it will be up to Storm to deliver the news when he (or she) is old enough and ready.

Shutterstock / Haywiremedia

A Canadian couple is keeping the gender of their 4-month-old baby under wraps. Are they helping or hurting their child?

The parents, Kathy Witterick, 38 and David Stocker, 39, hope to raise their child in a world that’s “unconstrained by social norms about males and females,” according to the Toronto Star. They want their child to freely grow into his (or her) own person and to find his (or her) true self unhindered by gender stereotypes.

Only a handful of people know whether baby Storm is a boy or a girl: the parents, of course; Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2; a close family friend; and the two midwives who delivered Storm at home in a birthing tub.

You might assume Storm’s appearance would give the gender away but photographs posted on the Toronto Star depict a blonde-haired baby that looks no more like a boy than like a girl–there’s really no way of telling. The parents mix up the pronouns they use when referring to their child. They dress Storm in pink one day and blue the next, and often the baby is wearing gender-neutral colors like red. What’s more, Storm’s longhaired brothers are often wearing more girlish colors and they’re mistaken for females.

The parents alerted friends and family of their idea to keep Storm’s gender under wraps in an email: “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …).”

Their announcement was met with mixed reactions. The grandparents were slow to warm up to the idea. Many friends were supportive but a few were confused, even angered. Some feared that Storm would grow into a child who’s bullied by peers.

Reactions in the Internet world have been equally conflicted. Some criticize the parents for treating their child like a lab rat and others applaud their efforts to fight against societal pressures. Many point out studies indicating that male and girl behaviors are influenced by prenatal development, not only by societal pressures. They say boys will go after toys that are stereotypically male even if you push dolls on them.

Over at BabyCenter, one reader chimes in: “I see this backfiring in the future when the kid is confused as hell going through puberty and the social outcast throughout their life. You can have a girl and let her play with doll and truck and roll in the mud and not pressure her to ‘act’ like a girl. And little boys can enjoy playing dress up and playing with dolls too. We are given our gender for a reason and if we were meant to be neutral we’d all be hermaphrodites.”

At Babble, one reader writes in: “I think there are great points to what this family is doing, I wouldn’t be able to keep my baby’s gender a secret, but it’s not for me to judge this families choice to raise their children in what seems like a loving, healthy way.”

Is it possible to raise a gender neutral child? Do you think the parents are helping Storm or just messing the child up by keeping his (or her) gender a secret?